Many people think the yellow pages are merely a place to put their phone numbers in large type. Silly thinking! The Yellow Pages are an arena for attracting the business of active prospects. They are a place to confront prospects on a one-to-one basis. You are selling. Others are selling too what you sell. The prospect is in a buying mood. Understand that opportunity, and you’ll be able to create yellow pages ads that translate into sales.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Unethical people are essentially selfish and unscrupulous, saying or doing whatever it takes to achieve an end. Ethical people are generally trustworthy, fair, and impartial, respecting the rights of others and concerned about the impact of their actions on society.

Ethics plays a crucial role in communication. Language itself is made up of words that carry values. So merely by saying things a certain way, you influence how others perceive your message, and you shape expectations and behaviors. Likewise, when an organization expresses itself internally, it influences the values of its employees; when it communicates externally, it shapes the way outsiders perceive it. Ethical communication includes all relevant information, is true in every sense, and is not deceptive in any way.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Communication among individuals and groups is vital in all organizations. The primary purpose is to achieve coordinated action. Just as the human nervous system responds to stimuli and coordinates responses by sending messages to the various parts of the body, communication coordinates the actions of the parts of an organization. Without communication, an organization would be merely a collection of individual workers attending to separate tasks. Organizational action would lack coordination and be oriented toward individual rather than organizational goals.

A second purpose of communication is information sharing. The most important information relates to organizational goals, which provide members with a sense of purpose and direction. Another information sharing function of communication is the giving of specific task directions to individuals. Whereas information on organizational goals gives employees a sense of how their activities fit into the overall picture, task communication tells them what their job duties are and what they are not. Employees must also receive information on the results and their efforts.

Communication is essential to the decision-making process as well. Information, and thus information sharing, is needed to define problems, generate and evaluate alternatives, implement decisions, and control and evaluate results.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The culture and social systems in which marketing communications takes place are loaded with meaning. Through socialization, people learn cultural values, beliefs, and become familiar with the artifacts that are associated with these values and beliefs. The artifacts of culture are charged with meaning, and this meaning is transferred from generation to generation.

Marketing communicators attempt to draw meaning from the culturally constituted world and transfer that meaning to consumer goods. Advertising is an especially important instrument of meaning transfer. The role of advertising in transferring meaning has been described in this fashion.

When exposed to advertising, the consumer is not merely drawing information from the ad but is actively involved in assigning meaning to the advertised product.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Without customers you have no sales, no income, no profit, no business—and soon no organization. Unfortunately, when you meet other managers they often seem to forget this, and talk about profits, productivity, return on investment, data ratios and personnel problems. Sometimes customers are clearly an irritant, getting in the way of smooth operations, asking awkward questions and making unreasonable demands.

The purpose of your organization is to supply a product that satisfies customer demand. This should be the focus of the whole organization. To sustain competitive advantage requires a total commitment to your customer. If it is good for your customers, do it! The dollars will follow.

This consideration on customers involves:

Finding out exactly what customers want;

Designing products to meet these demands;

Doing research and development so that your product range responds to changing demands;

Aiming for complete customer satisfaction;

Getting a reputation for outstanding quality and value;

Doing after-sales checks to make sure that customers remain satisfied;

Looking outwards so that you are always in touch with customers, potential customers, competitors, alternative products, etc.

Allowing customers easy access to your organization and making them welcome;

Discussing customer service widely, so that everyone knows your aims, and shares thoughts on customer satisfaction.

Some say that you should go further than merely satisfying customers, and should exceed their expectations – delighting or crossing them. Whatever you call it, you depend on satisfied customers coming back with repeat business. It typically costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one – and someone who gets good service will recommend you to four or five other people, while someone who gets poor service will warn a dozen potential customers to go somewhere else.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Canvassing can be the most inexpensive marketing method of all. In fact, it can be free, except for the time you devote to it. And if you’re just starting out, time is something you have a great deal of in your inventory. After all, canvassing is merely asking prospective customers for business. During a canvass, which the dictionary defines as “a soliciting of sales,” you should engage in three separate steps.

The first step, called the contact, is when you first meet your prospect. That first impression counts like crazy. So make your contact friendly, upbeat, customer-oriented, honest, and warm. Try to establish a relationship. You need not talk about business if you don’t want to. You can talk about matters personal, about the weather, about a current event—probably about your prospective customer

The second step of canvass is called the presentation. It usually takes longer than the other steps, yet it need take no longer than one minute. During the presentation, you outline the features of your offering and the benefits to be gained from buying from you. Some pro-canvassers say, “The more you tell, the more you sell.” If it is a home security system, your presentation might take fifteen minutes. If it is an offer to wash your prospect’s car, the presentation might take one minute or less.

The third step of a canvass is the most important part. It’s called the close, and it is that magical moment when you complete the sale. That happens when your prospect says, “Yes” or signs on the dotted line or reaches for his or her wallet or merely nods affirmatively. If you are a poor closer, it doesn’t really matter how good you are at the contact and the presentation. You’ve got to be a good closer to make canvassing work at all.

Before there were any other methods of marketing, canvassing existed. In fact, the very first sale in history probably occurred when one caveman asked another, “When to trade me an animal skin for this fruit I picked?” no advertising was necessary. No marketing plan, either. Life has become far better since then. But far more complicated, too.

If you think that canvassing is like door-to-door selling, you’re right only if you want to do it that way. You can canvass by going from door to door. You can do it in residential neighborhoods, and you can do it in commercial neighborhoods. Or, you can presell your canvass by first calling or writing the people you intend to canvass. You have a choice of telling them you’ll be coming around so that they’ll expect you sometime, or actually setting up an appointment. When that happens, it’s more like making a sales presentation than canvassing. For most, canvassing is something done with little or no advance warning. Sure, it helps if you advertise so that the prospective customers have heard of you when you come calling. But you don’t have to advertise. If you make a good contact, a crisp presentation, and a dynastic close, and if you are offering a good value, canvassing may be the only marketing tool you ever need.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

A policy of employment security carries with it the task of managing the steady movement of employees out of redundant jobs and into jobs that have come into demand inside or outside the firm. Otherwise the employer faces mounting costs and the danger of carrying surplus people on the payroll, in addition to the costs and turmoil of hiring new employees. Uncontrolled, these costs jeopardize the policy of employment security, the viability of the firm, or both.

Managing the redeployment of people is not accomplished by merely setting goals and urging managers to pay heed. Specific responsibilities have to be assigned to individual managers, and specific routines for anticipating, planning, and implementing moves must be instituted. In a large organization, these arrangements will be put into place at site level, division level, and corporate level.

Retraining is and will continue to be an essential step in the process. Concrete methods that companies (and unions) have devised to ensure that retraining serves the purpose of employment security.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight